The Impact of an Authentic Sports Leadership Program for Coach

Abstract

Purpose: This paper studies the effects of authentic sports leadership training on coaches' self-perception of their own authentic leadership, perceived justice, competence, overall self-efficacy, and collective efficacy. Additionally, players' perceptions of their coaches with respect to their authentic leadership, perceived justice, competence, collective efficacy, satisfaction with the coach, and support for basic psychological needs were analyzed.Design: Twenty-five football and handball coaches were randomly assigned to two groups. Fifteen coaches made up the experimental group that carried out the training leadership program, while 10 coaches made up the control group, carrying out no training whatsoever. A total of 248 football and handball players participated in this study; 136 were led by coaches who participated in the training program, and 112 by coaches who did not participate in the program.Results: The results of this study indicate that coaches' self-perception is positively influenced after having received training in the variables of authentic leadership, perceived justice, competence, overall self-efficacy, and collective efficacy. Players whose coaches were part of the program perceive them as being more competent as coaches.Conclusions: The effects of an authentic sports leadership training program are effective for coaches and players alike.

Coach competence, justice, and authentic leadership: An athlete satisfaction model

“…The results achieved in this research coincide with another where the perception of authentic leadership increased, but greater athlete satisfaction with their coach was not achieved. 36 In contrast, some results directly relate authentic leadership with athlete satisfaction and greater confidence in the coach. 37 Therefore, it is possible to indicate that perceived justice is a variable with complementary and necessary characteristics for developing authentic leadership to modulate coaching satisfaction.…”

“…26 Based on the above, Malloy and Kavussanu, 35 in an intervention designed to increase authentic coach leadership, evidenced athletes' greater enjoyment and prosocial behavior. In this sense, Soto et al 36 showed that athletes perceived that their coaches were more competent when they developed greater abilities related to authentic leadership. Likewise, Bandura and Kavussanu 37 concluded that authentic leadership perceived by athletes is related to satisfaction, commitment, and enjoyment.…”

Ser un entrenador competente y líder auténtico influye en la satisfacción de las necesidades psicológicas básicas del deportista

“…Thus, the explanation of the relationship between authentic leadership and athletes' positive perception of BPN support may be based on internal interpersonal characteristics in the conceptualization of authentic leadership (Bandura & Kavussanu, 2018;Soto Garcia et al, 2021).…”

“…In the middle of the space between these two variables, many other factors affect coach-athlete interaction, as well as sport performance and athlete satisfaction. In response, some authors have investigated the role of psychosocial elements such as leadership or fairness in athletes' perceptions of coaches (Bosselut et al, 2012;De Backer et al, 2011;Leo et al, 2019;Pires et al, 2022;Soto-Garcia et al, 2021, 2023. Leadership in sport is described as a process which the coach, manager or even the same athletes can influence the motivation and behavior of the others (athletes/teammates) to look for and work for achieve a common goal (Turnnidge & Côté, 2018).…”

“…An authentic leader is conceived as someone interested in developing the necessary competencies, as well as promoting autonomy in the control and direction of decisions about the practice of their athletes (Soto-García et al, 2023), which should translate into benefiting the SNPB (Pulido et al, 2020). Previous studies have been reported the relationship between coach competency and leadership behavior (Bosselut et al, 2012), or coach competency with BPN satisfaction (García-Calvo et al, 2014;Pulido et al, 2020), as well as analyzed coaching leadership and BPN (Bandura & Kavussanu, 2018;Soto-Garcia et al, 2021), while the study of Kao and Tsai (2016) reported the mediational role of the coach competency over the transformational leadership and the athlete satisfaction relationship. Since coaching competence is based on the coach's ability that is related to knowledge of the sport, it should be associated with a cognitive ability of its own (Cassiano-Neto et al, 2018) rather than a psychosocial element such as leadership behavior to influence team engagement (Walumbwa et al, 2008).…”